7/20 Legoland

After one hour driving from the hotel, we arrived Legoland before 11am. It is a cute place for kids to play because many things were made of Legos or "look like" making from Legos.



Before we went, Hee and I had visited their website for online map and ride introduction to pick up the rides that we would be interested and arranged the routes, so we could skip the routes that we were not interested in and saved some time.

Few minutes after getting in, we saw our first target: Safari Trek. It looked like a train ride, and my 膽小的 kids and I might enjoy. It was about 45 minute waiting time, but the line was not really long, so we got in anyways. It's shorter than 45 minutes, might be only 30 minutes. Kids were doing fine at waiting. Finally, it's our turn to ride, we were so excited; however, the ride was over in less than 5 minutes. I couldn't believe that the ride was so short! It's not worthy to stay 30 minutes in line for this ride.

Then, we went to music fountain. The instruments would play the music only when people stepped on them. Watch a video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWVDSH_eJ54

We've heard of Volvo Driving School from a friend before we visited, so I had told Ha about it, and he wanted to try. Hee was too young for the Driving School, but he didn't want to go to Junior Driving School alone, so he didn't go. In the Driving School, Ha drove the car alone; stepped on gas or brake; stopped at red lights and stop signs, and it was like real driving with other kids on the mini streets. He was doing very well, but again, the time was too short. Fortunately, except for the first ride (Safari Trek), the waiting line was not too long. When they got out of the car, we saw Ha walking toward a girl's car and was helping her with something. Such a gentleman! Later, he told us that the girl didn't know how to untie the seatbelt, so he helped her. Ha loved this ride very much!

Then, we had a lunch at one of the dining centers. After lunch, we went for the factory tour, but again, it's short and it's not very interesting.

Skipper school was a big hit of our day! Kids drove and controlled the boat in a small lake, and parents sat beside them. The lake was not too big, so I didn't expect that it would be a long ride based on the previous experiences of other rides. Ha controlled my boat, and Hee controlled Stephen's boat. It was ok when we just started, and things got funnier and funnier when a little baby driver joined the mess. Since 他不按牌理出牌，大家亂成一團，也笑成一團。船頭一下向前，一下又被擠向後，我們這個ride 坐了about 15 minutes......後面在排隊的人看了我們的混亂，又等了那麼久，一定氣死了！A video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY7Tn59Y_us
I had so much fun on this ride!!!

On our way to another area, I saw Splash Battle: A family of 4 were on the same boat with water guns to shot other boat and 路人，and 路人 had water gun to shot them as well. Stephen didn't want us to get too wet, so we didn't take the ride, but personally, I thought that it would be a fun ride, too.

Then, we went to Miniland USA. They made a lot of famous buildings by lego blocks. Here were few of them: San Francisco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXI8LfmzQXY; Los Angeles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtcQKbJGJ2g. We took a Coast Cruise ride to visit the miniland, and it was a longer ride, and we saw some famous buildings in other countries as well.

We also went to Imagination Zone where kids could play with the legos. In Build & Test room, Ha and Hee made lego cars and raced with other kids' cars. Their cars were pretty good. At last, we went to watch a 4D Bob the Builder show. We didn't tell Hee to watch a "movie"; otherwise, he wouldn't go in. We just told him that we were going to watch Bob the Builder, so he went in happily. It was fun, but there were not really many 4D effects in the show. I only saw some fake snow flakes at the end.

Since we were going to have a dinner with Ran's parents, we left Legoland around 4pm. Even though we hadn't finished all the rides that we planned to, we had fun!

Dinner was in San Diego with Sophia's family and Ran's parents. His parents ordered many delicious dishes, and we were so full! Kids also had fun playing and chasing in the room.

7/19 Swimming in the Hotel

After Getty Center, we planned to visit Santa Monica Beach; however, it was about 2pm, and the Sun would be too harmful for our skin, so we decided to go to our hotel first. After a hour of driving, we arrived the hotel; however, when we entered our room, we found that it only had a king bed and a pull-out sofa bed, so we requested a double Queen bed room. The customer service, Becky was patient and nice, and we got the room that we wanted. Then, we explored everything in our room and the area around our room; finally, we were ready to swim at 5pm.

We were the only family in the pool for the most of the time, so we had a lot of fun. Ha could 憋氣 and swim for a short distance, but he hadn't figured out how to 換氣. Hee was still afraid of water, but with Stephen, he enjoyed the time in the water, too.

When it's getting cold, we used the warm spa. Kids were excited about feeling the bubbles coming out of the small holes.

研究：高耗氧運動好處多 可降罹癌機率

法新社巴黎28日電） 根據今天公布的研究顯示，男性常進行能使心跳加快的高耗氧運動，可以降低罹患癌症的機率。

這項在「英國運動醫學雜誌」（British Journalof Sports Medicine）刊出的研究報告指出，降低罹癌風險重要因素是進行高耗氧量運動。

芬蘭庫奧皮奧（Kuopio）和奧盧（Oulu）大學研究團隊對年齡在42至61歲間、2560名無癌症病史的男性，進行以12個月為週期的休閒體能運動研究。

經過平均16年後續追蹤，研究對象中有181人死於癌症，多數是胃、腸、肺、前列腺及腦癌。
科學家使用運動強度量表發現，和較不運動的男性相比，每天至少運動30分鐘的男性罹癌機率降低一半。這個量表在於測量耗氧量新陳代謝單位。

研究發現，罹癌機率降最多是腸胃癌及肺癌，且即使將年齡、飲酒、吸菸、體重等因素考慮再內也是如此。

研究者提出結論：「應適量進行高強度休閒體能運動，才能達到有效降低整體癌症死亡率的效益。」（譯者：中央社陳蓉）

7/19 Getty Center

Getty Center is a museum with marvelus architectures and precious collections, and it was funded by Paul Getty Trust. Paul was a very rich business man who viewed art as a civilizing influence in society and strongly believed in making art available to the public for its education and enjoyment. He opened the J. Paul Getty Museum to the public in 1954. This small museum, established in his ranch house in Malibu, housed collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, 18th-century French furniture, and European paintings. Fascinated with the ancient world of the Mediterranean, he later built a Roman-style villa, modeled after the Villa dei Papiri of the first century A.D. When most of Mr. Getty's personal estate passed to the Trust in 1982, the Trustees sought to make a greater contribution to the visual arts through an expanded museum as well as a range of new programs. Getty Center was opened in 1997. http://www.getty.edu/

The admission was free, and we just needed to pay $15 for parking. We took Tram from parking lot to the hilltop Getty Center, and the Tram was computer-operated. It took about 5 minutes to get to the Center.

The buildings and the design of the Center were modern, but we loved its gardens the most. There are 2 gardens, and we loved Central Garden more because it's bigger and has lots of different kinds of flowers and plants.

Kids were not very interested in collections, but they loved to spend time in the family room. We drew, made masks, played with plastic tubes, different mirrors, magnets and more.

It also had free umbrella for travelers to borrow if it's hot outside. We borrowed 2, and they reminded me of 歐巴桑 in summer.

We stayed about 4 hours there, and I took a short video clip :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og7tiw-u_SA. For more photos, please see the slide show on the sidebar.

《現代飲食八大迷思》專題

「吃錯了，當然會生病！」暢銷三十萬冊，讓持有合格美國自然醫學執照的陳俊旭醫師，因此躋身暢銷作家之列，陳醫師說這完全是無心插柳的結果，當時他只是單純地想傳播正確的健康飲食的觀念而已，想要幫助許多人從疾病痛苦中，用最天然的方式拾回健康。
陳俊旭從多年的臨床中發現並且歸納出，現代人的身體出狀況主要以吃錯了食物佔大多數，這也的確符合俗話「病從口入」的說法。另外，陳俊旭也看到現代人吃藥吃得凶。他強調，其實有百分之八十的慢性病，都可用自然食物的正確吃法及營養調理來改善，如果再加上自然醫學的天然藥物和療法，甚至可以徹底根治，根本不需要吃人工西藥。
陳俊旭多年來專研自然醫學，有豐富臨床經驗，竭盡所能地為病人解決各樣被西醫放棄的疑難雜症，近年來用寫書和演講的方式來推廣正確健康的觀念，是他認為最能回饋華人的事。(From world journal 7/24/09)

陳俊旭在HOC5有免費講座: 8/2日下午1:30-3:30舉辦《現代飲食八大迷思》專題, 歡迎參加。
Address: 10340 Bubb Road, Cupertino, CA 95014
Phone: 408-996-8208

Tips to cut the cost while enjoying the trip

Cutting the cost doesn't have to sacrifice the quality of the trip! This San Diego/LA trip, we cut the cost and had a better quality trip than ever!

1. Hotel: I highly recommended Priceline.Com! It's such a fun website. If you got familiar with how to use it, you may get very good deal....I couldn't believe that we had stayed at a 4-star hotel with $63 one night!

I have to introduce our hotel rooms because they were unbelievably good:

7/19: Ayres Hotels & Spa Mission Viejo ($72)

2 Queen beds, 2 flat screen TV, a separate family room, and good breakfast.

A short video for the room: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru7GwBePdN0

7/20: Courtyard By Marriott Old Town ($58)

Nothing very special about this room, so I didn't take the video clip. It's just a ordinary hotel. Clean, nice, but no "high quality" surprises.

7/21: Omni San Diego ($63)

It's a 4 star hotel, and has a high class bathroom. 有video 有真相：http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNFildzzHNg

The weak points for the last 2 hotels were that they didn't have breakfast and free indoor parking. We had to find a street parking for the Courtyard hotel, and find a parking lot ($8 per night) for Omni. If we want to park indoor in their parking lot: $30 per night! Can you believe it???價格真是“高級”啊！In Omni Hotel, Stephen said that he saw people wearing formal clothes, and even 10 year old boy wore formally. 我們穿著短褲拖鞋，也照樣去享受了一晚！

2. Meals:

We didn't eat in the hotel room. our first night was in Mission Viejo, a brand new area, and even the hotel was 2 month old. There are toll stations around the area, so within few miles of distance, we paid around $5 for tolls. There's no lunch or dinner served inside the hotel, so we walked to the little mall nearby. Most of the restaurants are pizza, sandwiches..., and we didn't like them, so we went to "VONs" (Safeway in Northern CA) to get some frozen dinner. Each person could choose one or two items that they liked, and everyone was very happy and enjoyed the dinner.

Likewise, the second and third hotels didn't have free breakfast, and breakfast would cost $12 per person, so we got driving direction and bought different buns and soy drink from Ranch 99 for day 4 and bought cupcakes, muffins and milk from nearby store for day 5.

3. Admission Tickets:

Getty Center is free with $15 parking fee, but Legoland and Sea World are about $65 for adult and $55 for children over 2. I got a Legoland "buy one get one free" coupon from a friend and got a SeaWorld "Adult for kids price, kids 1/2 price" coupon from another friend. Also, I got information about discount tickets sites and Stephen's company also sells discount tickets (about $15 off). There are many ways to save money if you are willing to look for it!

Out of all the different strategies, I thought that "buy one get one free" coupon worked the best. Therefore, I went to Ebay to find more "buy one get one free" coupons for both parks. I spent $1.50 to get another buy one get one free coupon for Legoland, and we ended up paying only $120 Legoland park admission in total ($65+$55+0+0). I spent $3.50 to get "buy one adult get one kid free" code for SeaWorld online purchase, and paid $130 in total ($65+$65+0+0) for SeaWorld.

Hope our experience can help you in terms of planning for your next vacation!

7/18- Ben's birthday party, 1st day of LA,San DiegoTrip

We planned to leave our house for the LA/San Diego Trip early in the morning on Sat. 7/18; however, Ha was invited to his best friend, Ben's birthday party on 7/18, so we decided to leave after the party was over, which was about 2pm. The party was in Golfland, and since all the parents left their children alone in the party, I went home to pack for our trip, too, so as soon as Ha came back, we could head to LA immediately.

We left our house around 2:30pm, and Stephen drove highway 85, 101 and 152 and part of highway 5. I continued to drive the rest of highway 5 for about 2 hours, and then, Stephen drove the hill area and drove to the city. This way, each driver could get enough rest and enjoy the scene around the highway. On our way near Gilroy, strong garlic smell went in the car; we saw a beautiful lake and mountains along the way to LA; and the kids and Stephen took a nap while I was driving. I really enjoyed driving on Highway 5: high speed and few cars.

Even though we stopped in McDonald's for around 30 minutes, we still got to LA at about 7:30pm. Thanks to Ran's parents for letting us stay at their apartment in Monterey Park, we didn't have to look far for Chinese food for dinner. We had fried rice, fried noodles and a tofu in a Chinese seafood restaurant nearby, and it was good. Kids were happy for the dinner. For some reason, these ABCs always like to order Fried Rice and Fried Noodles in the Chinese restaurants,真是沒品味！

After dinner, we went straight to the apartment to have a good night sleep. One funny thing: I liked to put our dirty clothes in a plastic bag and bring back home to wash when we were on the trip. On that day, I also collected all the trash in another plastic bag when we left the apartment. I told Stephen that one of the bag was clothes, but he didn't pay attention to what I said. The next day when we were in the hotel, I couldn't find our dirty clothes bag, and we realized that he had put both bags in the big garbage can in the apartment.

For photos, please see the slide show on the side bar.

Hee 作品在圖書館

左下角那張就是。只要交去就會被貼上去，小孩去圖書館看到自己的作品也很高興。

Every Wed. afternoon, the library has special programs. Last week, it was a puppet show, and yesterday, it was a musician & magician. They were all very funny, and kids and adults 都笑得東倒西歪。

國家公園周末免費

From World Journal

國家公園周末免費
編譯中心綜合14日電
July 15, 2009 12:00 AM

國家公園和紀念館的免費周末又來了！如果你錯過了上個月的第一個免費週末，不要太遺憾，因為國家公園局18日到19日再度推出免費周末，以刺激國家公園的夏日人氣。最後一個免費周末將在8月15日到16日登場。

民眾本周末不用花10元買門票，就可以遊覽國家公園。不過，免費周末只適用於門票、商業導覽費用和車輛門票，露營、訂房、導覽和特許經營等收費不受影響。不過，許多特許經營商也配合免費周末，推出服務折扣。

49個州共有391座國家公園，大峽谷、洛磯山國家公園和優勝美地等上百座國家公園都參與免費周末計畫。

此外，懷俄明州的大泰頓國家公園表示，他們本周末將舉辦一系列活動，包括Jenny湖的獨木舟和小艇之旅、天文活動，以及為愛鳥人提供兩個徒步旅行導覽。

Xin and Ai Came to visit

My parents and sister's family came to visit us on Sat., so our tent was set up again! It became our official guest room.

The first day, Ha, Dad and Sophia's family were sleeping in the tent, and the second day, Ha and Sophia's family slept in the tent because my parents went home. Hee slept in my room with Stephen, and I slept one night in Ha's room and one night in Hee's room.

Ha and Hee played well with Xin and Ai, and had a water gun fight with Uncle Ran (See video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au1n9Mr2klo ). We had roasted the marshmallows, and Ha organized a Christian songs singing concert. We had a great time when they came to visit.

Photos will be shown as slide show on the side bar.